02 Heller's Revenge - Heller Read online

  “Shouldn’t you be up on stage?” criticised the manager. “You know, doing your job?”

  “This is my real job,” I countered coolly before turning back to Frankie. “Come on, Mr Hazzard. Let’s call you a taxi and get you off back home.”

  His face brightened immediately. “You recognise me?”

  “Sure I do,” I smiled. “Rate My Date was one of my parents’ favourite shows.”

  He jerked his head towards the manager. “This arsehole didn’t recognise me.”

  “I still don’t,” the manager finally snapped, his temper flaring. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re just some crazy hobo who’s wandered in off the street looking for a free feed and somewhere to take a piss.”

  “Who you calling a hobo?” Frankie demanded.

  “You. Hobo.”

  “Arsehole.”

  “Hobo.”

  “Arsehole.”

  I sighed. “All right, enough with all this witty banter. I’ll call a taxi and see Mr Hazzard safely on his way. You’re not here to make a fuss, are you, Mr Hazzard?”

  “I want to see Jenna,” he said simply. “She’s my niece.”

  “Bullshit,” muttered the manager. I shot him a look warning him to zip it.

  “Jenna’s busy working,” I told Frankie.

  “Jenna’s always busy working,” he replied sadly, all his belligerence deserting him. “Every time I ring her she’s too busy to talk to me. I’ll wait. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her.”

  “That’s not a good idea, Mr Hazzard. She’s going to be flat out working for the rest of the day. She has a number of TV and magazine interviews lined up after the show,” I lied. “She’ll be lucky to be out of here by midnight.”

  He faltered and continued softly, “But I don’t want her to think I wasn’t here to support her.”

  “I’ll let her know you were here,” I assured, thinking that if Jenna had wanted the poor guy present at her show, she would have made sure that he received an invitation. She obviously hadn’t.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  He was defeated. “Okay. Ring me a taxi.”

  Yes! I silently cheered. Heller was going to be so proud of the calm way I handled this, I thought happily. I couldn’t wait to tell him. I was forever in trouble with him over something or other, so this would make a pleasant change.

  “Can you lend me an arm to lean on?” Frankie asked humbly in a low voice. “I’m a little under the weather today. It’s been a real shit of a week so far.” He laughed with charming self-deprecation. “Actually, it’s been a real shit of a decade so far.”

  “My pleasure, Mr Hazzard.” I held out my arm and he rested his on it gratefully, gripping a little harder than I’d expected, to be honest. I herded him towards the door.

  “Call me Frankie. Now tell me why in God’s name you’re wearing such an . . . er . . . interesting outfit? Not that it isn’t a welcome sight for an old fart like me.”

  “It’s a long story,” I began with a huge sigh, but before I could say another word, the manager called me back with a discreet whistle that I didn’t for one second mistake for a sign of appreciation at my rear view.

  “Hey, you! You’re not walking out of here wearing one of Jules Roux’s lingerie sets! That’s a thousand dollars worth you’re wearing there.”

  Holy shit! A thousand bucks for these pieces of nothing? Heller didn’t pay me enough to shop in this store. I spun around to snap at him that I’d be back in a second with his precious lingerie, only to find that somehow one of Frankie’s cufflinks had become tangled in the silver chain of my leather wrist band.

  I raised my arm to gain a better view of the tangle and Frankie’s arm was forced to rise along with it.

  “Oops. Looks as though we’re caught up together,” I giggled.

  Frankie frantically shook his arm around trying to disengage the cufflink from the chain, only making us more tangled as he did. My laughter dried up.

  “Just stay still,” I ordered, annoyed by his drunken attempts to help. I put my hand on his chest to push him back a smidge, so I had a better view of the tangle, raising our arms above our heads again.

  “No, if we twist this way, it’ll work,” he insisted, trying to turn me sideways but only succeeding in snagging his other cufflink to the chains linking the pieces of leather covering my boobs. Realising his blunder, he yanked his arm away, pulling my chains with him and straining the leather across my chest.

  “Whoa, hold on, Frankie! Don’t move any more. You’re going to rip my bra off!”

  “Oh shit. Sorry.”

  “Hell,” I grumbled to myself as I tried a few moves to extricate him from my chains. I might have sorted it out myself, but Frankie insisted on ‘helping’, fumbling with the chains, raising our linked arms when I wanted them lowered, pushing me back when I was trying to peer at the tangle more closely. We struggled against each other, our arms waving around, his unsteadiness on his feet causing us both to stagger.

  “Stay still, will you?” I bit loudly, losing my temper, forcing his arm down yet again, needing both my hands to attempt to detangle his cufflinks from my chains.

  “Oh my God! There’s a fight!” shrieked a female voice from the audience.

  A fight? Where? I thought, looking around in alarm before realising that everyone was staring at Frankie and me, running over at our commotion.

  “He’s attacking one of the models!” squealed another in terror. “Someone get help.”

  “It’s a mad man!” screeched a third. “He’s probably a Jenna stalker. Where’s security? Someone call the police!”

  “No, no –” I started to explain, but Frankie panicked when he saw the angry crowd heading his way and spun to flee, jerking on my chains as he did. Taken unawares, I didn’t have a chance to ready myself and twisted awkwardly, falling against him and bringing him to the ground. I landed on him heavily.

  “Ooof!” he grunted in pain. “Get off me!” He pushed against me and rolled from one side to the other to dislodge me, while I tried to stop him and to get him to remain still for a minute so I could free us. But judging from the ensuing clamour, I guessed it appeared to the gathering crowd as though we were scrapping.

  During his exertions, Frankie’s cufflink freed itself from my chest chains. In another attempt to stop him struggling, I flipped him on his stomach and raised his hand behind his back so I could unpick the tangle of his cufflink in my wristband. Finally liberated from each other, I gently helped him to his feet and looked around for my colleagues, who were sheepishly pushing their way through the crowd towards me.

  That was when I realised that the show had stopped and Jenna and her retinue of models were standing idle up on the catwalk, seething, nobody paying them any attention.

  Somebody was going to pay for that, I thought with resignation. And that person was probably going to be me.

  “Put him in a taxi and send him home,” I instructed one of the men in a low voice as I handed Frankie over to him, conscious all the while of Jenna’s death-glare directed at me. “I’m making myself scarce.”

  I slipped away, grateful to find myself alone backstage. I located my uniform and hurriedly changed back into it, glancing nervously towards the gold curtain, not wanting to face either Jules or Jenna. Grabbing handfuls of moistened wipes, I hastily cleaned all the makeup off my face and twisted my hair back up into a professional bun. I was ready to rejoin my security team.

  I was just congratulating myself for escaping detection, when the whole disgruntled troupe of women returned backstage, headed by a distraught Jules and a stony-faced Jenna. I made a run for it.

  “You!” they both shouted when they spotted me.

  I froze. Damn! A few more seconds and I would have been home free.

  I swung around and smiled at them with fake brilliance. “Fantastic show! I’m off now. Thanks for the experience – it’s been a real . . . um . . . experience. The lingerie’s in the ch
anging cubicle and the shoes are somewhere near the stage.”

  “You ruined my business,” wailed Jules.

  “You ruined my show,” spat Jenna, icicles of icy rage shooting from her eyes. “You’re going to pay for this, bitch.”

  I sighed. I just knew that somehow everything was going to end up being my fault.

  Jenna stalked up to me, jabbing her finger at me, anger spoiling her beautiful features. Spittle collected unattractively at the corners of her mouth as she screeched at me. “I am sick to death of talentless, ugly, fat women like you trying to steal my glory.” Hey! I thought, annoyed. I’d admit to being talentless, but I wasn’t ugly or fat. “I am the star here. You are nothing! Understand? Nothing! And if you ever dare to upstage me again, I will make sure that you never work in this business again. Understand?”

  She’d obviously forgotten that I didn’t work in this business, so instead of offering my grovelling apologies as she clearly expected, I confused her by going on the offence.

  “Well, that gratitude for you, isn’t it?” I demanded from all the other women in the room. “Especially after I just saved her from a dangerous stalker.”

  But Jenna was scornful. “That man was no stalker.”

  “He said he’d been ringing you repeatedly,” I explained honestly. “And that he wanted to be here to see you on your big day. He wanted to talk to you.”

  She paled and slumped, leaning heavily on the back of a chair. Her fury evaporated. “You really think he was a stalker?”

  I felt callous then because she was genuinely fearful, having been spooked by stalkers before.

  My tone was suitably sympathetic. “Yes Jenna, I really do.” And I sent a silent ‘sorry’ to poor Frankie for turning him into a villain, knowing that now I could never pass on his message of support to his niece.

  “But what happened?” she puzzled. “I didn’t notice anything until the music stopped.”

  So I explained how I’d seen the man from up on the stage and expressed my fake regrets about abandoning the show to deal with the situation. Then I told her that I would never have willingly risked ruining her show, but that as a licensed security officer, I was duty-bound to place the safety of my client above all other considerations. And that sounded horribly corny to me, but she lapped it up happily.

  Some of the stylists burst into the room then, chattering excitedly about how a stalker had been stopped from harming Jenna, greatly boosting my story.

  She turned to me, sincere gratitude in her eyes. “Thank you so much . . . um . . . um . . .”

  “Tilly,” I smiled.

  “Thank you, Tilly. I’ll make sure that your employer hears about what you’ve done today.”

  Good God, that was the last thing I wanted! “That’s not necessary,” I assured hastily. “Your thanks are reward enough for me.”

  And being the person that she was, she accepted this as only being natural.

  “But what about me?” fussed Jules. “My show’s fucking ruined!”

  “That’s nonsense,” I insisted impatiently. “All you have to do is get out there and perform that grand finale again. Show everyone that Jules Roux and Jenna Mackenzie can’t be stopped by a mad stalker.” And then to my shame, I embellished further. “Even one with a knife.”

  “A knife!” the crowd of ladies whispered to each other with muted excitement.

  Jules and Jenna conducted an entire silent conversation with one exchanged look, before both nodded.

  “And then,” I continued my sage advice, inching my way to the exit. “Call some media outlets and do some interviews after the show. It’s free publicity for you both and everyone comes out looking good.”

  Everyone except poor Frankie, I thought sorrowfully as I reached the door. Jenna and Jules nodded at each other again, before assembling the women into formation again, Jules ordering the sour blonde girl who’d jostled me to stand down so the numbers would be even. The bitter look of pure hatred that she shot me in response haunted my dreams for a few nights afterwards. I didn’t want to ever meet her alone in a dark changing cubicle.

  I disappeared through the doorway and scrambled down the stairs to find Tony, chuffed to extricate myself from that piece of madness without any repercussions.

  “Don’t know what we’re going to tell the Boss about all of this. He’s not going to be happy,” Tony noted dolefully, carefully watching my reaction.

  There were a lot of men at work who thought I was Heller’s little playmate and that I would go running to him, telling tales about my colleagues. I never would, but it’s hard to shift people’s preconceptions sometimes. I wasn’t really sure why the men thought that anyway, because I was the one person in the office who found herself in trouble more often than anybody.

  My response was cool. “We’ll tell him that the job went smoothly except for a little disturbance that was sorted out straight away with no fuss.”

  Tony evaluated me for a moment before cracking a smile.

  “Provided . . .” I continued, taking advantage of that small but promising sign of friendliness, “that Heller doesn’t find out about my adventure on the catwalk. Deal?”

  Tony’s smile widened and he nodded. “Deal.”

  Both satisfied, we turned our attention back to the job. It wasn’t long before the models had reassembled and were strutting on the catwalk again finishing Jenna’s grand finale. Tony’s concentration quickly wandered back to more fleshly pleasures, but the remainder of the show proceeded without any further problems.

  Soon enough, the four of us had returned to our Heller’s 4WD, heading back to the office to knock off for the day. But instead of returning there, I asked the men to make a small detour on my behalf in order to drop me off on the footpath outside a small and pretty suburban cottage. I waved as they drove away, already forgetting them as I eagerly jogged up the stairs of the house to its front door.

  Chapter 3

  Much later that evening, I made another half-hearted attempt to leave.

  “Don’t go,” he pleaded again, sitting up to kiss my back, reaching his arm around to cup my breast in his hand. He gently brushed his fingers across my nipple and I closed my eyes, enjoying the thrilling sensations his touch sparked. His other hand crept down past my stomach, one finger darting out to lightly rub intimately against me.

  “Stop it,” I groaned, twisting around and pushing him backwards on the bed, the tangled sheets surrounding us testament to the ardent hours we had spent together. I straddled him and held him down by his shoulders. “Haven’t you had enough yet? You’ve screwed me three times already tonight. You can’t possibly be hard again.” I leaned down to kiss him lingeringly on his mouth, reaching down to find that unbelievably, he was hard again.

  “I’ll never have enough of you,” he grinned wickedly, kissing and teasing my nipple with his tongue.

  “You are a very greedy boy.” He grinned again.

  I raised my body and lowered myself slowly onto his erect shaft. He made a low pleasurable growl. I grasped his hands and stretched his arms out over his head, pinning him to the bed while I moved my body up and down on him. We kissed deeply, tongues twisting together, and I pumped vigorously until waves of ecstasy rolled through my body. A few pumps later, he shuddered and moaned also. I collapsed onto him, breathing heavily. He wrapped me in his arms and rolled me over, assuming the dominant position.

  “You always run away at midnight. You’re like Cinderella,” he complained, nibbling on my ear.

  “That must make you my Prince Charming then,” I teased, kissing his nose. “Although I don’t remember Mum reading me the part in the story where Prince Charming shagged Cinderella’s brains out all night.”

  “He didn’t get the chance, did he? Because she kept running away. If she’d stayed past midnight for once, all I can say is if the pumpkin coach is a-rocking, don’t come a-knocking.”

  I giggled and pushed him off me. I managed to make it off the bed this time and dressed quickly in
my work uniform again. I pulled on my socks and slipped my feet into my boots. I didn’t bother putting my utility belt back on, slinging it over my shoulder instead. I probably should have gone home to change before I came to his house, but I hadn’t wanted to waste any of the precious little time we had together.

  “Tilly,” he remonstrated in a sulky tone.

  “Will,” I replied patiently. “I have to go. My ride will be here any second. And he hates to be kept waiting.”

  “You never stay all night. It would be nice to wake up next to you one morning. I want to make you breakfast.” His soft brown eyes regarded me plaintively as he ran his fingers through his wild, curly brown hair. We’d been going out for about three months now and had had this same conversation every time we’d seen each other. To tell the truth, it was becoming a little tiresome.

  I suppressed a huge sigh. If only he knew what I had to go through to even be allowed to spend half the night with him. I leaned over the bed and kissed him gently.

  “I know you do, babe, but I have to go.” I checked the time on his bedside clock. “Shit! I’m late.”

  I kissed him again hurriedly, leaving him watching after me unhappily as I raced out his front door. I flew down the front path, vaulted over the gate and threw myself in the passenger seat of the black Mercedes 4WD that was idling outside his house.

  “You kept me waiting, Matilda,” said the man in the driver’s seat.

  “Sorry. I lost track of the time.”

  He leaned over, grasped my chin in his hand and searched my face intently, taking in my satiated features. He rubbed the back of his thumb gently over my lips. “You have a rash. You should tell him to shave more carefully.”

  I gazed into his piercing blue eyes and smiled lazily. “I don’t mind. It was well worth it.”

  “You had a pleasant evening?”

  “Very.” I stretched languorously and yawned hugely as he drove off. “Did you?”

  “We had a poker match. Niq won. He scammed twenty dollars out of me and forty dollars out of Daniel.”